


Suicide Note

by smaragdbird



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: M/M, POV First Person, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:16:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/pseuds/smaragdbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The song 'Suicide Note' belongs to Johnette Napolitano.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Suicide Note

**Author's Note:**

> The song 'Suicide Note' belongs to Johnette Napolitano.

In retro perspective we should have known it. No, that's wrong. I should have known it because I knew him or at least I thought I did. I was wrong and he paid the price for my arrogance.

I always took him as a survivor. Someone who only needed himself, who didn't ever trust someone else completely. Someone with a thick skin.

I hadn't been able to see what he really was: an artist, a sensitive person that had lead a life that made him hide his true persona underneath images of fire he painted with his hands and with his head. An artist has to express himself. You can cut of his hands but you can't stop him from imagining as long as you let him live. You can't kill the muse that kissed him, the spirit within if you don't kill his soul.

However, you can stop him from expressing himself but it's like tying a knot into a running water hose: if the pressure's too high it'll explode.

John didn't use brushes, pens or an instrument, because if he had then maybe I would have understood, but he used fire and we took the fire from him.

Every night you wrote another line

With a bloody, broken bottle

And every day you wish it away

Why don't you pull the pin on that grenade you coddle

You know where the irony lies in this story? In my actions. I carried him out of Alcatraz, out of the destruction Phoenix wreaked. I thought about dropping him between the cars somewhere, letting him escape. I thought for a moment that I owed him his freedom since it had been my carelessness with his heart that drove him in this situation in the end, but I brought him back to the mansion and signed his death warrant with this.

We gave him The Cure. It was essential because otherwise we would have had to hand him over to the government but despite everything it felt as if he was still one of us and we thought it was better to try and re-integrate John back in our society than locking him up in prison.  
We had been so unbelievably naïve.

I wanted to believe

Bodies swinging from trees

Struggling to stand

With your head in your hands

A stoic last stand of a dying man

_  
He looks so small in this bed, between the stark white sheets and blankets and bandages that cover his hands and a part of his temple and forehead. We had to shave off his hair so fortunately there's not a single blond hair on his body anymore._

Really, I think, why blonde? You always talked about dying it black if at all, John.

He sleeps, really sleeps for the first time in days. I can tell by the way his body reacts that it isn't fever or sleeping pill induced unconsciousness. I have been watching him for the past days and I still remember him sleeping three years ago.

His eyelids flutter and I know he will wake up soon. John doesn't wake up like me. I'm asleep and the next second I'm fully awake. With him it's like a long, floating process that takes its time before he is really awake and able to function.

He opens his eyes, closes them immediately again and makes a displeased sound at the back of his throat.

'John?' I ask and his eyes open again. He stares at me for a second before his body tenses and he presses his eyes shut again. He has a concentrated look on his face, his eyes are moving underneath the lids and I know that he's trying to feel fire. I wonder if he can still do that or if The Cure took more than his ability to manipulate it.

'John.' I say tentatively: 'You can't...'

I shiver when he roars in desperation and anger and betrayal. This is not a sound a human being should ever make.

Despite his physical weakness caused by rest of the fever that still rages through his body his agility has not suffered or maybe it's the rage that makes him that fast. I don't know and when his fists pound against my chest I don't care. I could shove him away but I feel that I owe him something and Storm or Hank will be in here soon. I swear I can see flames in his eyes, fire raging, reigning his body without a way to find release.

'Why didn't you kill me?'  


I wanted to believe as I watched your world crumble in your hands

I wanted to believe as you raised your glass to your last stand

And I wanted to believe you would win the war in your head

That I did not understand

I brought him back to our old room. I didn't live there anymore but we had decided not to assign him to live with me again. We decided to give him some privacy and as long as he lived there I only entered the room on the first day.

I remember it vividly: I carried the box with his old stuff into his room as he stood there with a lighter in his hand, a small flame danced on top of it and he had his eyes closed and tried to feel anything. His thumb brushed the flame and with a surprised cry he let the lighter fall. He looked at his thumb as if he had never seen it before. The skin was angry red where it had come in contact with the fire. It had burned him. I couldn't understand what that meant to him because my ice always made me shiver with its coldness not just as much as other people.  
If you lock fire in, it will burn until either no oxygen or no tinder is left. It's such a simple process, yet we couldn't see it. We were blind in our arrogance, self-righteous because of our triumph that we couldn't see the catastrophe right in front of us.

I say we but it is me that is to blame. He was my responsibility because I knew him best of all of us and I thought he did well after the first days. He fit back in, too well, too easily. He smiled too much, was too pale and his eyes were too guarded. It should've alarmed me but it didn't. I even respected his wish not to go into his room. I thought I owed him, even more now that he fit in so well.

God was I stupid.

His fingertips were now always covered with ink and he was constantly writing with a feverish brightness in his eyes, his hand moving so fast that I nearly thought that his body was developing a new mutation.

Why didn't you kill me?

That was the first thing he said to me after I took everything from him.

Yes, why didn't I kill you?

Every night the questions poured out

Of your wounded eyes, damn dark things

Every day you used to pray

Listen to the black raven sing

_  
A knock on my door, it's nearly ten o'clock and when I open it John stands in front of me. His hair has grown back but he doesn't comb it out of his face anymore and the beard is new, too._

'Hey.'

'Hey.' He answers and looks at me: 'I'm not disturbing you, do I?'

'No, you don't. Why, do you want something?'

He dangles a couple of keys in front of my face.

'Yes, so come on.' Impatiently he grabs my arm and drags me out of my room and through half the mansion into the garage despite my numerous protests.

'Here.' He pushes a motorcycle helmet in my hands and opens the garage door.

'You know that Logan will kill you for this, right?' I ask because he chose Logan's motorcycle for wherever he wants to take me. John simply shrugs and gestures me to sit behind him. It's nothing what we haven't done years ago and I don't think twice when I slide my arms tightly around his waist.

'You're warm.'

'I'm always warm.'

'No, you're warmer than usually. You're not ill, are you?'

'No.' he replies shortly and steps on the gas.

And really, John's driving style hasn't changed a bit. It still makes my innards threaten to come out and I'm too engrossed in preventing that to notice where John takes me. Only when we stop I take a look around.

We're in front of the local ice rink.

'Come on Bobby.' He urges me.

'John, it's after ten. It's closed.'

Again, the dangling keys and though I probably do not want to know how John got them I get a faint idea of what he has planned. We were here many times, although John was normally very sensitive when it came to cold temperatures he had quite a talent for ice skating and I liked every winter sport so we spent at least as much time here as we needed to settle our arguments in the danger room in the mansion.

As usual, John is much faster with loosening his shoes and fastening the skates than I am since I don't just throw the shoes from my feet.

And, different to John, I need a little time t readjust to the feeling of ice beneath my feet. He laughs at my first awkward step and I, feeling very childish for a moment, stick my tongue out.

'How very mature of you.' He grins and takes me hand to swirl me around.

'The inevitable symptom of spending too much time with you.' I retort and he snorts.

'Blaming it on others is not very mature either.'

'I only spoke the truth. Ask anyone, they will back me up.'

'Of course they will, you could freeze their balls off.'

I laugh along with him and shake my head. He easily slides away from me and yells:

'If you catch me I'll take your next kitchen duty.'

'And if I don't?' I yell back as I chase after him but he's too small, too agile. He grins, comes nearer, into my reach and draws back before I can touch him. Then I miscalculate and land flat on the ice with John's mocking laughter ringing in my ears. He skates a long, elegant slope over the rink before he reaches me and helps me up. The stark difference between the ice and his too warm hands on my arms lets me shiver. John cocks his head and when I don't let go of him, he leans in and kisses me.

It's not only his hands that are warmer, it's his mouth and lips and tongue, too but I'm far from complaining. The kiss is long, drawn out and maybe a little desperate but I couldn't care less.

When he draws back, he says quietly:

'Don't expect too much.'

I don't understand but I'll ask him later, I think, when I draw him back into another kiss.  


You wanted to believe as you were falling to your knees

Struggling to stand with your life in your hand

The sad last stand of a broken man

We parted in the hallway in front of my room that night. I didn't want to rush things I thought I had lost forever. I really believed that night that now everything would be fine, that we would live happily ever after.

I did not see that John's kiss hadn't meant reunion.

It had meant goodbye.

The next morning I opened his door and stepped into the room for the first time since John had moved in.

I couldn't breathe.

The walls were covered with letters, scarlet letters, blood letters. Much of it was smeared. The shutters were closed and the only light came from the uncountable burning candles that stood all over the place. Their flames cast an eerie light and let the bloody letters dance on the walls. In the middle of it lay John, pale, much too pale soaked in too much red. He didn't wear a shirt and I could see the numerous cuts on his arms and his stomach, all shallow except for those on his wrists.

I had driven him to this.

I did not understand

And the questions poured out

Out of your body, pushing you down, holding you down

The sound of you falling as the trembling heart of a dying man.

_  
Why didn't you kill me? Why didn't you kill me, Bobby? Why? Why? Why? I should have died there. Nothing can be wore than this. Don't you see? This is hell. This is hell. This is hell and you don't see it. You don't see the hell you created for me, you pushed me in. It burns. It burns all the time. I can feel it, inside me, around me. Why didn't you kill me? It burns me up from inside and I can't do anything about it. Kill me, please kill me. I can't go on like this. I never burnt before. I don't want to burn._

Why didn't you kill me?  



End file.
